Panel Links al Qaeda to Khobar Towers Blast, Other Attacks

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Panel Links al Qaeda to Khobar Towers Blast, Other Attacks

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• Publié par: ycyzadom
• Nombre de lectures: 52
• Langue: English

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Air ForceMagazine Aerospace World September 2004  Panel Links al Qaeda to Khobar Towers Blast, Other Attacks  The national commission investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States found strong but indirect evidence that al Qaeda played an as-yet unknown role in the 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia.  The attack killed 19 airmen and injured 372 other Americans. Many had blamed the bombing on the Hezbollah terrorist group. In a staff report released at the end of June, however, commission members noted that ambiguous evidence of involvement by Osama bin Ladens terrorist organization had been present from the beginning. Evidently, bin Laden was not considered a prime suspect at the time because of the historical animosity between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Many had concluded that al Qaeda would not align with Hezbollah.  Later intelligence, however, showed far greater potential for collaboration ... than many had previously thought, the report stated.  The commission noted that the US had intelligence reports prior to the Khobar Towers bombing that bin Laden was seeking to facilitate a shipment of explosives to Saudi Arabia. And, on the day of the attack, bin Laden was congratulated by other members of the Islamic army, a loose coalition of terror organizations with al Qaeda at its core.  According to the report, bin Laden had in fact sent al Qaeda operatives to visit Hezbollah camps in the years before the Khobar Towers attack. The commissioners said that bin Laden reportedly showed particular interest in Hezbollahs truck bombing tactics in Lebanon. In 1983, such an attack killed 241 US servicemen, primarily Marines. The attack on the Khobar Towers high-rise residence was conducted using an explosive-laden truck.  The report cited several other plots against Americans in the 1990s, plots in which bin Laden may also have had a previously unknown role. First, the December 1992 explosions outside two Yemen hotels frequented by US troops headed to Somalia were linked to a Yemeni terrorist organization whose leader was close to bin Laden, the report noted.  In October 1993, stated the report, bin Laden probably contributed to the attacks on US forces operating in Mogadishu, Somalia. Eighteen soldiers died after two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down over the city by rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). According to the report, al Qaeda, prior to the attack, sent experts in the use of RPGs to the city with instructions to kill US troops.   Next was a November 1995 car bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that killed seven, including five Americans. Three of the four perpetrators who were arrested and executed by the Saudi government said they had been influenced by bin Laden.  Finally, the commission refused to rule out an al Qaeda factor in two other deadly attacks: the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 plot to blow up a dozen US airliners over the Pacific Ocean. Bin Ladens role in both remains a matter of substantial uncertainty, the commission reported.